Hm.... My girlfriend and I were considering the blurays, kinda sad that season 2 is of a lesser quality. But if the rest of the seasons are good, I think we can deal with it.

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Mage, don't be put off Season 2. Technically, it's certainly inferior to the other TNG BD's thus far released - but is neverheless vastly superior to the DVD's.

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Definitely. Overall, I'm happy with my purchase. And just to expound on the flaws I pointed out, the third and last two points happen very, very rarely. But the rest is fairly pervasive, unfortunately. But the live-action photography mostly looks just fine.

I agree with that. I was initially pretty pissed, but overall I'm happy with it. It doesn't take long to get used to the muted, grainy look of the most of the live action footage. The only parts that really make me wince are the DNRed scenes that had bluescreen elements.

I don't know if this was mentioned, but in "A Matter of Honor" at the end of the Episode when the Enterprise is removing the Organism from the Klingon Ship, it is doing so on the wrong side of the Klingon Ship.

I don't know if this was mentioned, but in "A Matter of Honor" at the end of the Episode when the Enterprise is removing the Organism from the Klingon Ship, it is doing so on the wrong side of the Klingon Ship.

Well I finally found some time to watch a few S2 episodes last night. I watched The Schizoid Man first and this is the first episode where I really noticed just how bad a job HTV did. There's a scene between Data and Graves where they cut back and forth between the two that is just awful. When the shot is on Data there is a lot of film grain but when they cut to Graves it is DNRed all to hell. I can only assume it is because of the computer graphics F/X they needed to add and that they couldn't be bothered to try and add grain to match.

The planets were equally disappointing. I am really glad that they didn't get any more work after this season.

Are you sure it was DNRed? I don't have the season set, so I can't comment on the shot in question, but ias it possible one of the shots actually was grainier than the other? There's a shot in one of the Alien Nation movies which cuts back and forth from Sikes behind the wheel of his car to George in the passenger seat. The mismatch in film grain was really evident. Kenneth Johnson even mentioned how bad it was during the DVD commentary. One shot was nothing but grain, the other clean.

It's not DNR, it's just inconsistent grain. That happens all through the season. The ones with bad DNR are ones like Measure of a Man (conference room with Maddox) and The Dauphin (when the girl beams out as a pillar of light).

In the shots with Graves there is an animated computer terminal in the background which is what led me to believe DNR was used as I seem to recall that a common complaint about HTV was that they used a lot of DNR when they added F/X to a live action shot.

In the shots with Graves there is an animated computer terminal in the background which is what led me to believe DNR was used as I seem to recall that a common complaint about HTV was that they used a lot of DNR when they added F/X to a live action shot.

Now that I'm up to date with TNG on Blu Ray (Leaving Descent till I get season 7), I've gone back to listen to the audio commentaries. There was some great stuff in Season 2, but man I kind of wish they would stop interviewing Dan Curry. I find him somewhat boring and it made for the Q Who commentary (Which should have been very interesting) into something very mundane. I did like that they talked to Rob Bowman, especailly after I've just seen the entire X Files series and he was significantly involved in that. As for the commentary for Measure of a Man, Snodgrass was very interesting. I loved that they included the commentary on the extended edition because she had some really great stuff to tell, especially her thoughts on TNG compared to Star Trek.

If there is a missed opportunity to these sets, it was the lack of extended episodes. For example, I just saw Rightful Heir and there were so many deleted scenes in that episode. They should have just reinserted those deleted scenes and made it another extended edition. That's why you have a format like blu ray. It isn't just putting the series into HD, even though that's really important, it's putting all that other stuff back into it and really going Behind the scenes of the show or movie.

So, the Measure of a Man 'Hybrid Extended version' is an interesting thing. It's weird watching it with none of the sound effects put in, silent dramatic pauses with no music, all the costumes rustling and doors rattling. But the weirdest thing is hearing Patrick Stewart fluffing a line (either that, or it's a glitch in the VHS audio), and they must have had to dub over it. When he says:
"he's met two of your criteria for sentience already, so what if he meets the third, consciousness, in even the smallest degree?"

What he actually appears to say in the original audio is "sentienceness", which is obviously not a word, but it must have been the best take.

I didn't watch the entire thing as I'd burned out on watching original and HD extended versions already, but I noticed it when flicking through and found it funny.

Also interesting how the 'extended' version isn't just new material; there are changed or newly added shots in the aired version (including the close-up of Data's severed hand twitching).

Also interesting how the 'extended' version isn't just new material; there are changed or newly added shots in the aired version (including the close-up of Data's severed hand twitching).

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There's at least one other example of an alternate take being used in season 2 (Q Who). HTV, the company that worked on season 2, used their own process called iConform, an automated system that reconstructs the edit from the film takes. It's possible there were some similar but not exact takes being used.

In the case of The Measure of a Man, I compared both versions. The framing and color timing is slightly different between the two, suggesting that each version was mastered from scratch separately. The remaster team used Snodgrass' VHS tape (the one seen in the hybrid version) as a basis to construct the extended version.